Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: ECLOGUE, by STEPHANE MALLARME


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTERNOON OF A FAUN: ECLOGUE, by             Poem Explanation         Poet's Biography
First Line: These nymphs, whom I itch to perpetuate
Subject(s): Nymphs


ECLOGUE

These nymphs, whom I itch to perpetuate --
so clear
Their lightness, yet incarnate, flesh of this air
Made rosy by woodland slumber.

Was loving a dream?
Like a drift of ancient night my misgiving grows,
Numberless subtle ramifications, which merge
In these real branches -- ah, proof that I wake alone
Who mistook for triumph the dreamt ideal of roses!
We must think again . . .

Or suppose these two you spell of
Are no more than desires of your own wondrous senses!
Faun, illusion trembles in those blue cool eyes
Of the one more chaste, seeping as from a pool.
And then this other, all sighs, will you say that she,
Contrasting, is the day's hot breeze in your fleeces?
But no. Through this swooning immobility and laziness,
Cool morning (if it resists) smothered in torpor,
No water murmurs except this from my flute
Wetting the verdure with harmony, and the only wind
Is from these two pipes which exhale quickly
Before it disperses their song in an arid rain --
This now on the far unrippling horizon,
Visible and serene, this artificial breath
Of inspiration remounting to the sky.

O calm banks of that pool I plundered in Sicily
With my self-love once to spite the jealous sun,
Silent beneath those spark-like flowers, RECALL
"How I here, cutting the hollow reeds that genius
Subjugates, see wavering, on the hazy, distant,
Golden greenery which consecrates its vine
To the springheads, an animal whiteness come to rest;
And how then in the low prelude when the pipes
Are born this flight of swans -- ah, naiads! -- runs
Or plunges . . ."

In the hot hour the inert world burns,
Not revealing by what art that virginity,
Craved by him searching the la, vanished together:
So I shall rouse myself to my original fervor,
Upright and alone, under the sky's ageless flood
Of light, you lilies, and one with you for innocence.

Besides this nothingness, sweet hint from their lip,
This kiss all in its promise of betrayal,
Still my shoulder, unproven, exposes a mysterious
Wound -- am I bitten truly, am I exalted?
Ah, enough! Something arcane chose to confide
Below the azure in this great twin reed we play on,
Which dreams in a long solo, taking to itself
The cheek's shamed blush, how we were amusing
To the beauty around us through false confusions
We conceived between her and our credulous song;
And how also in song's sublimity a purging
Might strike from our worn fantasy of a pure
Back or flank, pursued by my half-closed eyes,
One sonorous and vain and monotonous line.

Try therefore, o instrument of transport, cunning
Syrinx, to spring and flower again by the lakes
Where you await me! I, proud of my intoning,
Will speak at length of goddesses and strip off
With idolatrous images their sashes in the gloom.
Yet then, when I've sucked brightness from the grapes,
What of regret? And what of my scattered pretenses?
I laugh and raise the empty cluster and blow
On the translucent skins, crazy for drunkenness,
Gazing through them at the summer sky till evening.

O nymphs, let us renew our particular MEMORIES.
"My eye, piercing the reeds, darts to each
Immortal neck as it drowns its burning in the wave
With a cry of rage flung to the forest sky;
And the splendid liquescence of hair disappears
In brightness and shimmering, o jewels, jewels!
I run near; whereupon at my feet, entwined (tousled
In the languor sipped from this poison of duality)
They lie sleeping, tangled in their accidental arms,
Alone; I seize them, not untangling them, and run
To this bank abhorred by the frivolous shade
Where roses exhaust their perfume in the sun
And our frolic too may consume itself in a day."

Oh, I adore you, virginal anger, horrified
Delight of the holy naked burden that slips
Away from my flaming lips as they drink, quivering
Like lightning, the terror secret to the flesh:
Yes, from lascivious limbs, from the timid heart,
Two in one instant forgoing innocence, wet
With wild tears or with less sorrowful moistures.
"Happy in overcoming their traitorous fears,
My crime is to have parted the disheveled locks
For kisses that the gods kept so well mingled:
For hardly had I buried a fervent chuckle
In the willing coils of the one (while holding
The other, so little, naive, not even blushing,
By only a finger so that her feathery innocence
Might be tinged from her sister's arousing passion)
When from my arms, unclasped by death's shapelessness,
This prey sets herself free, ungrateful forever,
Unpitying, though I am drunk still on her tear."

Let them go. Others will lead me to happiness
With their tresses woven around my head's horns;
My lust, you know how each pomegranate bursts,
Crimson, ready and ripe, murmurous with bees,
And how our blood, in adoration of what will subdue it,
Pulses for passion, that swarming profusion, forever.
So at the late hour when woods turn golden and ashen
A festival proclaims itself in the fading leaves --
Here, Etna! here where Venus herself visited you,
Treading on your lava, her bare pure feet,
In tremors of a wistful sleep or the flare dying.
I hold the queen!

O sure retribution ...
No, yet my soul
Is empty of words now and this ponderous body
Succumbs sluggardly to fierce noon's quiescence:
No more, we must sleep now, forgetting blasphemy,
Fallen on thirsty sands, opening my mouth
For love to the powerful wine-giving sun!
Good-bye
You two; I go to see the shadow you have become.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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